On a sunny Saturday in 1969, G. Barry Ashwell and David Jaeger, schoolmates
for 11 years, were ordained into the priesthood together. More than three
decades later - also on the same day - the Seattle Archdiocese announced
that the Vatican had defrocked both priests after numerous allegations that
they sexually abused children.

But here, their paths diverge. Jaeger - most recently known for his
sensitive ministry to AIDS patients - has confessed and requested to be
"released from the clerical state," while Ashwell remains unrepentant.
Defiant, he is now preparing to defend himself in court.

"These people claim to be victims, and they very well might be - but not by
me," he said Tuesday in a rambling, hourlong interview that revealed a man
stunned by his ostracism after a long and storied career.

"Did I do anybody any good, ever? Where are they all? No one speaks to me at
all now. Everybody runs for cover. I'm a hermit."

Ashwell ran St. Augustine Parish on Whidbey Island from 1978 to 2000, when
he was transferred to churches in Buckley and Wilkeson after repeated
allegations of abuse had surfaced.

Jaeger, 62, served at St. Joseph Parish in Vancouver, Wash.; Immaculate
Conception in Everett; and St. Therese Parish in Seattle. He also held
administrative positions in the archdiocese.

Both were removed from active ministry several years ago pending the
Vatican's decision on their cases. Now neither will be permitted to function
as priest any longer, though Ashwell still considers himself one.

"They haven't un-priested me," he said. "They can't. It's not just what I
am, it's who I am. I'll never be anything else."

Physically small but personally imposing, Ashwell, 62, enjoyed a legendary
tenure in Oak Harbor, where he also served as a state-licensed foster parent
to at least five boys, one of whom accused him of sexual abuse. That man,
Louis DiDomenici, settled his case against the Seattle Archdiocese in 1996,
and Ashwell remained at his post.

His 22-year term in Oak Harbor was unusual in a region where priests
routinely are rotated from parish to parish, and some attributed this to a
"Napoleonic" personality. He was iron-willed about staying on quiet,
out-of-the-way Whidbey Island, and commanding enough to ensure that will was
obeyed.

His 36 years as a priest were upended Thursday, however, when Archbishop
Alex Brunett called him to Seattle. Ashwell, who had spent the last few
years fighting a two-pronged battle against both the archdiocese and the
Vatican to regain his position, knew what was coming.

"You're finished," is what he remembers the archbishop saying,
matter-of-factly.

The Vatican had defrocked him - its highest possible sanction against a
priest - after both Brunett and a board of outside evaluators made similar
recommendations. Three other priests from Seattle are awaiting a decision
from Rome.

In a statement released on-line, Brunett apologized to victims of clerical
sexual abuse and said the judgment on Ashwell and Jaeger confirmed "the
sincerity of our resolve to seek justice in these cases."

To those who remember the Father Ashwell of their youth, the news came as a
shock. From a tiny town 3,000 miles away in Maine, Gina Sisto nearly wept.

"I don't know - guilty or innocent - but I will never forget the priest he
was for me, which was phenomenal," she said, recalling the night that she
arrived, unwed and eight months pregnant, at the church for services.

"He blessed my stomach and never questioned it," she said.

Even the mother of a man who made the first official complaint against
Ashwell, about abuses occurring in Vancouver during the 1970s, was shaken -
though grateful.

The archdiocese, she said, had been nothing but "supportive, very kind and
compassionate." Other families, though, characterized Ashwell's punishment
as "too little, too late."

Attorneys for the archdiocese already had spent years working to resolve two
lawsuits against the priest; both were settled out of court, and two more
are pending, one of which targets Ashwell individually.

Once a powerful local force, the ex-priest says he has no lawyer to fight
it, no money to support himself and few friends to turn to for help.

"Nobody will take my case, so I guess I'll have to stand on my own. We
priests don't have the money that other folks have."

Several of Ashwell's accusers have, however, described him as a man of
substantial means.

"He had a beautiful, new car every two years and real expensive Italian
shoes," said one of the men, now 34, who contends that Ashwell assaulted him
in the bathroom of the priest's residence when he was a 12-year-old boy. "I
highly doubt it's because of money that no lawyer will represent him,
especially if he's looking locally."

The man, who works in corporate food service, recalled the priest paying him
$150 every two weeks for dog-walking services, then accosting him one night
in the rectory. Though pleased by the Vatican's decision, he was discouraged
at how long it took.

"There were instances reported way before me, all the way back to the '70s,"
he said. "Maybe if the church had acted upon it then, it never would have
happened to me."

Unless they agree to publication of their names, the Seattle
Post-Intelligencer typically does not identify people who say they have been
sexually abused.

From the first, Ashwell has denied every allegation, suggesting that his
accusers are out to bilk the church or blame him for crimes perpetrated by
others.

"People are drawing on their memories of God knows what - the repertoire of
their own experiences," he said. "But it's not me. It wasn't me. I think
they just want money. Anything I ever did in their lives was good."

Where he once ran a fair-size home, hosting his mother, several teenage boys
and sometimes community events, he now lives alone in an Oak Harbor trailer
park near a highway. He nursed his mother until her death last January and
spends his days praying, reading and writing.

"I write about everything. I don't want my story to go away. It should be a
very good read someday."